THOUSANDS EXECUTED IN GUATEMALAN WITCH-HUNT
The reports coming out of the underground in Guatemala of a savage wave of repression, undertaken by the Méndez Montenegro government through the use of right-wing military terrorist organizations, are being confirmed by material appearing in the bourgeois press.
A good example is the account in the June 10 London Economist "from a correspondent in Guatemala City."
"Since last November," writes the Economist's correspondent, the revolutionary guerrilla fighters "have been heavily puffeted and thousands of their supporters have been slain in an anti-communist 'pacification' drive in the dry, hungry hillbilly country of the Guatemalan Oriente.
"The clean-up of the guerrilla zone," continues the correspondent, has been carried out in military style by a proliferating number of right-wing terrorist groups."
The line is a thin one between the official army and the groups specializing in the murder of civilians. "Some of these are phantom organizations under whose name soldiers in civilian dress carry out their more grisly operations."
There are also indications that the U.S. and the CIA may have a hand in the bloody activities:
"The principal terrorist organisation, the White Hand, is a creature of the Movimiento de Liberacién Nacional. In 1954, the MLN spearheaded the CIA-organized invasion from Honduras which, with the connivance of the Guatemalan military high command, overthrew the pro-communist regime of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz.
"Since last July MLN leaders in the Oriente and many of their followers have been disappearing into Honduras. A new low-range radio station, ‘Radio America, based in Honduras has been warning ‘peasants of a new invasion with massive
American support."
Even more concrete is the report
that "...the White Hand's anti-communist
vigilantes in the Oriente have received
roughly 2,000 rifles and machine guns
which were given to the Guatemalan arny
under the American military aid pro-
gramme. These weapons have been used in
the slaughter of guerrilla collaborators
and sympathisers in the towns and vil-
lages along the Atlantic Highway..."
On the actual number of. murders
by the American-armed terrorists, the
Economist estimates:
"Since the army began its offen-
sive, between 40 and 50 of the estimated
200 to 300 hard-core guerrilla fighters
have been killed. Army sources have put
the death roll at roughly 2,000 in the
eastern departments of Zacapa and Izabal,
the central area of rebel activity."
These figures indicate the massive
slaughter of civilians being carried out
by the pro-U.S. army and its terrorist
collaborators.
"One foreign missionary priest —
living in the guerrilla zone declared:
'There is seldom a day when you don't
see a body floating down the Rio Monta-
gua. The killings are always in the coun-
tryside, never in the town...'
The Economist's correspondent
says that "The surviving rebels have
withdrawn into a deeper portion of the
thicket, or into Guatemala City. Cap-
tured guerrillas in black hoods are now
accompanying army patrols in order to
point out men who have collaborated with
the insurgents and guerrilla camp sites
and buried arms deposits."
According to the Economist's Guate-
malan correspondent, "The violence of re-
cent months is believed to have claimed
more lives than all the insurgent activ-
ity of the past five years.